Quarter-Billion Dollar Baby

July 2, 2007 — -- Some people are jokingly calling it the "Jesus Phone."

Apple's much-touted entry into the mobile phone market -- the iPhone -- has been hyped so much, many people believe the cell is perfect, and spectacular weekend sales of the device aren't tarnishing its reputation as a market changer.

"According to rough estimates we believe Apple sold 500K units over the weekend," wrote Gene Munster, a technology analyst for Piper Jaffray, in a research note. Neither Apple nor AT&T were willing to release sales figures.

Munster had originally guessed that the iPhone would sell around 200,000 units during the first two days, a key period as it falls in the second quarter with results publicly reported on July 25 with Apple's official earnings report.

"After three days of using the iPhone and testing its features, we are generally impressed," wrote Munster. "The setup process involved some hiccups, but the touchscreen, keyboard and battery life are better than we expected. We believe mobile consumers are looking for an easy-to-use smartphone, and Apple delivered."

According to Muster's unscientific "survey" of more than 250 people at three Apple launch events in New York, San Francisco and Minneapolis, conversion is a big part of the iPhone's early gospel. More than half (52 percent) of the people Munster's team talked to had contracts with carriers other than AT&T.

That could mean redemption for AT&T, which locked up exclusivity for the device sight unseen more than two years ago; the company will add new subscribers despite some harsh reviews for its data network and iPhone sign-up process.

Over the weekend, there were anecdotal reports that the iTunes-based phone activation process wasn't working in some cases. Sources at AT&T tell ABC News the problems were due mostly to the volume of customers who signed up and ported numbers from competitors' networks.

A source familiar with AT&T says the sign-up error rate for the user-directed "provisioning" process was around 2 percent during the weekend. Most technology products, especially new products, have a user error rate of above 10 percent out of the box, analysts say.